Legislative

2009 Session Summary

2009 INDIANA GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Joan Laskowski, VP for Legislation

Members of the 2009 General Assembly had two imperatives: to pass a state budget and to insure re-election.  The first required special session overtime for the legislators; the second required overtime for the defenders of civil liberties.  This effort was largely successful.  Most Hoosier liberties survived.

The ACLU of Indiana, led by  Legislation Director Gavin Rose, followed over 100 bills, testifying and working with coalitions on many.  Results for some of the priority bills follow.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Once again there was a powerful  attempt  to make reproductive healthcare even less accessible in Indiana.  A bill to require physicians who perform abortions to obtain hospital admitting privileges in the county or the county adjacent to where the procedure is provided made its way through both chambers.  Under the color of patient safety, the legislation imposed stricter regulations on one class of doctors than on any others doing riskier outpatient surgical procedures.  It also ignored the fact that because fewer than 0.3% of abortion patients have complications requiring hospitalization, hospitals have little interest in granting admitting privileges. 

As a result of strong coalition work and emails and calls from ACLU-IN Bill of Rights Lobby members, supportive legislators succeeded in passing daunting amendments late in the process.  These required admitting privileges for all invasive surgical procedures and established the provision of breast and cervical cancer screening for uninsured women.  Insistence on these amendments ultimately defeated the bill in conference committee.  Your efforts were the vital force in defeating this legislation.  Thank you.

None of the many other bills impeding a woman’s access to reproductive healthcare were passed.  However, none of the reproductive freedom bills we supported were passed either.  These included measures requiring pharmacies to fill contraceptive prescriptions in a timely manner; defining contraception and exempting it from abortion statutes; requiring a principal to notify parents if the school is providing abstinence-only sex ed courses; and requiring medically accurate age-appropriate sex education.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Our keenest loss came in the special session, when the state budget was passed with a neovoucher provision giving a tax credit for contributions to nonprofit scholarship-funding organizations.  This takes up to $2.5 million of Hoosier taxes away from public schools and, for the first time, makes them available to K-12 private schools, most of which are religious.

The ACLU of Indiana strongly opposed this legislation.  The Indiana Constitution forbids drawing any money from the treasury for the benefit of any religious institution.  State legislators who supported this current voucher-funding plan, and the Governor, argued that the funds are “uncollected” tax dollars and that this makes the diversion from public to religious schools permissible.

This is not the end of the fight.  Legislative backers promise to return to try to increase both the present 50% tax credit for each contribution and the present $2.5 million cap.  This is the time to talk with your state legislators about your concerns regarding public school funding, which is a state constitutional mandate, and the preservation of religious liberty if government is permitted to use taxpayer money to benefit religious institutions.

VOTING RIGHTS

The ACLU-IN supported a number of bills to ease Indiana’s most restrictive in the nation voter ID requirements;  to extend poll hours; to expand the franchise and simplify voting procedures.  Only two bills passed, one of which was vetoed.

Legislation specifying that a voter who casts a provisional ballot must be told within three days of the election why the ballot is treated as provisional and what steps must be taken to have the ballot counted was passed by House and Senate but vetoed by the Governor.

The legislation that was signed protects the voting rights of the military and public safety officers and permits online voter registration for people with a valid driver’s license or state ID.

A much-lobbied measure authorizing as  sufficient voter ID an ID document with no expiration date or an indefinite date from an Indiana  post-secondary educational institution  or the military or the Peace Corps died in conference committee.

You can find out how your state legislators voted on these and additional key civil liberties bills by clicking 2009 Voting Records on our www.aclu-in.org website.  Whether your legislators have a high or low civil liberties score, your activism makes you part of a movement to preserve freedom.  Your interaction with your legislators and your contributions, which make it possible to hire a staff lobbyist, keep this movement alive.  Your continued generous support will determine its vigor.

2009 Summary and Voting Records